Life as a mother/wife/sister/daughter…good days and bad…we all have them.

We Most Likely Won’t Be Friends Anymore After I Vote On November 8th.

I am voting on Tuesday, as we all should. But I have decided to stick with my gut, and vote with my heart. I will be writing Bernie Sanders in. He told his supporters months ago, to not listen to him if he tried to convince us to vote for someone else.

And I trust he is right.

Otherwise, I am stuck with voting for two humans…a man and a woman…who are, combined, the most loathed candidates at one time in U.S. Presidential election history.

Both equally shady. Both equally disturbing.

I won’t tell anyone who to vote for, but I sure have had many people attempt to convince me to drop the Bernie act, or else.

I see it as a much bigger problem though.

We can be bullied into voting for one of two people who most likely will wind up having to be pardoned or impeached. I choose to save our country a little time a money, and be more optimistic.

We had a candidate that crushed the GOP candidates in almost every poll. We had a candidate that surpassed the other choice in many polls and won a shocking number of states in the primary…

But somehow he lost. We let him go.

We really needed someone-anyone like him to revive this self-destructive country from even more potential damage.

We should have been focusing on what was truth and what we needed to heal as a nation from years of failing healthcare, violence against each other, hate, low wages…

Instead we were distracted with even more violence and hate and even more of a headache with more insane plans for healthcare, how to stop violence, and creating jobs and equality for all.

We were told we were not sensitive enough to blacks, to gays, to police, to refugees…we were told to hate the other side even more because the Orange guy said racist and bigoted things. We were told to hate the lady in the pantsuit because…well, because she is a lady.

We never stopped to look around at the rubble…of the senseless murders of all the blacks and gays and police we were all too busy hating on.

The smoke is so thick in front of our eyes…

We have been blinded by the media and government…this hate never went away. Martin Luther King Jr. lead the path to transparency to seek truth and justice…but it wasn’t over yet.

It never really went away.

The Orange guy says all those dirty little secrets that have been whispered for ages…he spoke truths for those who were silenced by the media and government…and that’s ok in my book. We were fooled. We began to think people were more empathetic towards each other…enlightened after too many years of hate. These folks never decided to be more open-minded or more liberal. They kept talking, but no one was listening…until now.

The Orange guy handed them the megaphone on a silver platter…for ALL the world to hear…yes, world, this is how many Americans still feel. They are full of hate and fear and loathing for all things different-sexuality, abortion, race…nothing has changed.

And as for that lady…I wouldn’t give her that dignified title as a Lady…

She may have a vagina, but she has the balls of a hundred men.

To brazenly try to walk back in the White House as the rightful heir after she and her husband and their entourage of thugs were ever so nicely kicked to the curb…for many good reasons.

So now we are to forget about all their scandals, and all the hate speech the Orange guy spews and celebrate Tuesday night as we elect one of two criminal psychopaths? We are to cheer and to praise God he won/she won? That it is finally over?

Wednesday will be a hangover that will last for four very long years…

America made the wrong choices…for both parties.

I will not tell you to write in Bernie (although if you want to, that’s great!), but we need to reflect on how we got to this point, and how we will survive four years of pure hell. We had plenty of options on both sides…and now we have come to this…

I will have to live with your choices…I voted for Bernie. And I will not be told to or bullied into voting for either of your candidates. I will not make this bed…

Bernie was the best candidate the US has had for decades. But people want it right wing. And you can do nothing about it. You can continually repeat them what their choices are doing to the US, and especially to other countries who were invaded by the US, but most of them will still vote right wing. Cause they don’t wanna see, and that’s just it.

The problem with this post (besides the false equivalency, and the very fact that Hillary Clinton is in large part reviled not for her own actions, but by the false versions of them that have been being spread by opponents for decades – since she was a Wellsley graduate who dared to speak her own truth; long before she’d lived long enough to have earned that ire honestly) is the fact that, in order to qualify as a write-in Presidential candidate, an individual needs to submit a signed petition. This isn’t true for any other elected office, just like the Electoral College doesn’t apply to other offices.

Mr. Sanders did not submit the petition.

If you did, in fact, enter the voting booth and write him into your ballot, your vote wasn’t counted in his favor.

That might or might not trouble you. If it does, I’m sorry you didn’t know about this sooner, so you could have had the information going in. I didn’t know it either, until my local news reported on it.

I don’t think anyone should be bullied into casting their vote a certain way, but I think it’s fair to own the choice, even if we don’t make it public. As for me, I’ve been a fan of Mrs. Clinton’s for over 2 decades. I’ve gone from a young single woman to a middle aged married mother in that time, and she still impresses. Not many people could be so misrepresented for so long, and still stand tall.

I aspire to that strength.

All that said, a desire to vote for someone else will never be enough for me to deny someone my friendship. Treating other humans badly, though – that could do it.

I appreciate you reading my blog AND for your honesty/sharing your opinions.
I am sorry you didn’t appreciate my point of view, in favor of Hillary’s. I didn’t wind up writing in Bernie. After much debate with my husband, we chose to vote for Jill Stein as a protest vote against all the corruption on both sides. We live in NJ and write in’s are allowed. And I may have still done so if I wanted, as you chose to vote for a woman who misrepresents America-our country is not her corporation to buy/sell. Our country belongs to us, not the Clintons. They choose to do backdoor deals and get caught time and time again, and somehow squeak by. I won’t let my children think this behavior is ok for our country’s leaders. We choose honesty and integrity over money and power. And just because she is a woman, means nothing. If anything, she has disgraced women with lying and cheating her way to the top. We have never been fans of the Clintons, and I express my opinions now in this comment, because it is only fair to defend myself when you are able to express your own. I have no intention, and have not stopped talking to anyone because of this election. It was a jab at all the threats I saw being posted on social media-how absurd things have gotten with this whole election.
I grew up in a very Republican family, and have many friends who have vowed to unfriend anyone if they do not vote for HRC. I haven’t heard any Bernie or Trump voters say that…which also speaks volumes…sadly I have had many people stop speaking to me because I didn’t vote for her…that IS not friendship, and I guess that is where you and I have one thing in common-denying anyone friendship because of this, is taking things too far.

As I understand it, write-ins are allowed everywhere. The issue is that for the Presidential election, only candidates who file specific paperwork, including a petition, are counted as valid write-ins, and Mr. Sanders didn’t file.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate your point of view, and I certainly don’t see it as a contest between yours and Mrs. Clinton’s. I think there’s room for as many perspectives as there are people. I’m not sure any two are alike.

What I object to is the frequent accusations against her – or anyone – that have no evidence to back them up. Our Constitution says we are all presumed innocent until proven guilty, but she hasn’t been given that right.

We will now have a President who is facing many actual accusations of fraud, who already seems intent on using our government to further his personal self-aggrandizement, whose business ventures are already being integrated into his transition, and who just settled a major fraud case.

I’d rather everyone actually did research before they believe stories like this – because I’m certain that Mrs. Clinton was a far better choice than Mr. Trump.

All that said, my preference isn’t your responsibility. I think you may be right about the unfriending – I’ve seen similar things in my feed, although, personally, I prefer trying to understand the things that divide us, which is what moved me to respond to your post. You see, I’m a near-lifelong Star Trek fan, and I especially love Vulcans. One of the tenets of their culture is to value the diversities between us.

I think the unfriending is based in fear. While many people don’t like Mrs. Clinton, many have definite reasons to be frightened by the idea of Mr. Trump as our president, and that fear hasn’t been erased by some of his Cabinet choices. Fear can make people a little irrational and feel as though they need to protect themselves. I see unfriending as a bit over-reactive, and as a barrier to understanding, but I think I understand where it comes from.

And while I haven’t seen the unfriending on the other side, I also have never seen such sore winners as the Trump supporters. Just after the election, while many were struggling with the reality of the results and the fear of what it may mean for those most vulnerable, members of Team Trump were visiting pro-Clinton hashtags and gloating in a fashion that’s in keeping with their candidate’s tendencies. It was, frankly, ugly. My children were capable of more self-restraint well before their tenth birthdays.

That doesn’t serve any useful purpose that I can see, and, to me, that speaks with blatancy – those who didn’t or won’t kowtow to Mr. Trump are deserving of written abuse, which is definitely taking things too far.

I appreciate your willingness to discuss this, and I’m glad that you and your husband were able to find a candidate you could feel all right voting for. I’ve always thought it was better to vote than not to…and, regardless of the fact that I feel an eminently qualified, lifelong public servant was set aside in favor of someone I can’t respect (I’m from upstate NY and have been hearing about the man’s business for most of my life), and whose stated opinions will not, in my opinion, do a single thing to make this nation any greater than it already is, and potentially will do many things that gut it, I at least know that I used my voice…with my vote, and in conversations like this.

And, maybe more importantly, I’m not just interested in talking and listening to folks who agree with me, because I know I’m only one person with one perspective, and as capable of being wrong as anyone else.

May your Thanksgiving bring many things to be grateful for, and be filled with love!

At least you didn’t vote for Hillary. We can still be friends. I’m not one of those who bases friendship on political persuasion. 😉 Seriously, we are all entitled to have an opinion and act on it. Sometimes it is wrong–like when you kill someone. Trump always had good press until he decided to run for the presidency. I wanted Dr. Carson. I have faith in Trump, and believe that our country needs to be run like a business. Yet the media will crucify him at every turn because that’s what they do. The always make the democrat to be an angel and the republican to be the devil. The day after the election one TV news guy said Trump hadn’t fulfilled any of his campaign promises. He wasn’t even in office and the press was already dunning him! The media belittled everything Reagan did no matter how good it was. They seemed truly surprised by the world-wide turn out at his funeral.
I have always voted Republican after learning in school that the democratic party had 8 planks of the Communist platform in theirs; since then they have added the last 2. We fought against Communism, why would I want a Communist government?

I guess your last line is partially true, except now it is a bed of rising hate crimes and an increase in fear that the minority groups now find themselves experiencing, since you won’t be laying in the bed that is probably good for you but not good for those in this “bed”, chances are it isn’t that comfortable. Standing up for what you believe is important and your right but this election was about so much more than a single vote by a single voter, this vote impacts the globe and at the end of the day if you feel your vote was best used as a means to stand up for Bernie one last time, when he wasn’t going to win, then you did what had to be done for you, but again this election came down to being more about your community than you as an individual.

Thank you for reading. I didn’t wind up voting for Bernie, after much debate with my husband. We decided to vote for Jill. Not because we thought she would win, but because we believe that there should be more than two choices in our elections, as there are everywhere else in the world. That the third party vote is just as important. I am not thrilled with the outcome of this election, and it is heartbreaking to see this country crumbling. But the violence, hate, bigotry existed BEFORE the election…it never really went away. The fact that people are ADDING to the violence and hate, is absurd. There are solid issues right now that actually EXIST, and people are ignoring them to protest something that hasn’t even happened yet. My hope is the dust will settle, and people will start to talk to each other, and REALLY listen to each other…why two candidates that spoke of change from establishment politics in both parties, were the true winners of this election…their voices were heard and echoed…obviously with VERY different agendas, but they were FINALLY being heard. Bernie had his voice taken from him-proven. But he has moved forward and supported HRC even after all they did to him. He now supports President-Elect, and stays focused on fights hard…not with violence, or cheating or hate.